Eventual FCC Draft Media Ownership Rules May Resemble December Proposal
The FCC may not deviate much in eventual draft media ownership rules from what the agency proposed last month (CD Dec 23 p1), fans and foes of broadcaster consolidation predicted. Chairman Julius Genachowski likely won’t circulate any draft quadrennial review order until late this year or early next, said industry, nonprofit group and commission officials. They said it appears Genachowski has an open mind on what final rules he'll seek, and the comment cycle on the rulemaking ends April 3. He seems inclined to stick closely to December’s rulemaking notice, which strikes a balance of sorts between what industry and nonprofits want, officials said.
The draft order may lift a broadcast rule that few stations really want changed, ending cross-ownership limits on how many radio and TV stations can be commonly owned in the same market just as the rulemaking proposed, without allowing shared ownership of two TV stations in more cities. Broadcasters would like to see such duopoly rules relaxed. The draft may also allow daily newspapers and radio or TV stations to have common ownership in the top 20 markets, but not in smaller cities as some broadcasters and newspapers want. Nonprofits are opposed to any waiver process allowing such newspaper-broadcast cross ownership, nonprofit and industry lawyers said.
An eventual Media Bureau order may strike a balance between FCC Democrats and public interest groups, who may not want much deregulation, and commission Republicans and industry, who seek much more, some industry and nonprofit lawyers predicted. In so doing, it may leave both sides unhappy, they said. Wild cards are whether any commissioner seeks major changes to the eventual draft order -- though draft and final versions of most FCC rulings don’t differ much -- and whether Genachowski waits so long to act on the rules that a vote won’t happen until early 2013. If that delay occurs, and there’s a Republican in the White House, commissioners may have a much more deregulatory order to vote on in mid-2013, a TV lawyer said. A bureau spokeswoman declined to comment for this story.
More likely than a mid-2013 vote is one in November or December of this year or in January of next, some industry officials predicted. Genachowski seems to want to tackle issues in other areas, and other media issues, before getting to media ownership rules, a commission official said. “It is kind of an open joke inside the FCC and outside that this chairman is not that focused on media issues,” said Policy Counsel Corie Wright of broadcast M&A opponent Free Press. That “rankles some” for whom “broadcasting is there as their lifeline service, for lack of a better word,” she added.
Comments on the quadrennial review rulemaking are due March 5, replies April 3, said a commission notice in Thursday’s Federal Register. Dockets include 09-182, it said (http://xrl.us/bmo983). Having waited so long to release a rulemaking notice, given that Congress required the review to have been completed by Dec. 31, 2010, may work against the commission, Wright and others said. “The FCC, by having deferred the proceeding to this year, may have opened itself up to more outrage” because of continued unhappiness among some activists over the state of broadcast media, she said. But broadcast lawyer David Oxenford of Davis Wright said the commission has acted before on media ownership rules around the time of elections.
Other than a change in administration, which would mean a GOP FCC chairman, or a strong and sustained push from Congress to further relax media ownership limits, Genachowski may seek rules that are similar to what’s in the rulemaking notice, a veteran TV-station lawyer said. And Oxenford said it “looks like the FCC has kind of laid out a kind of middle path of making some changes, but not a lot of very aggressive changes.” There still will be “people pushing from both sides” of the issue, he said: “These ownership rulemakings are always controversial, and this one is not going to be an exception."
"In every one of the discrete ownership rules, I think there will be people who find whatever the commission has proposed in some aspect to be controversial,” Oxenford said. “A lot of the broadcasters, especially small-market TV stations, really think that TV duopolies in small markets are really necessary” to keep such outlets “viable,” he continued. And “there’s a lot of pushback from the radio industry to allow some more consolidation, especially in bigger markets,” he said. Another attorney said that small-market TV stations may make a push to get duopoly rules loosened.